The pilot event with the title NewMadTech was organized in collaboration with Fundación Créate and Círculo Hispano-Alemán de Jóvenes Directivos by the students Sebastian Ackermann, Hanna-Nejma Benlahbib, Michael Tetsuo Grundstein, Konstantin Kretschun, Cyril Tas and Martin Weber from the Madrid campus of ESCP Europe Business School. The 5 students realized this bootstrapped event last Thursday (14th of March) at the German Chamber of Commerce in Madrid with 20 children (4-12 years old) and the following Start-ups from Madrid: Sezion, EyeQoala, Qroac!, Qtag and uSpeak. The event attracted 80 exclusive visitors.

Prior to the event, the start-ups were left in the dark and merely knew that “extreme users” will participate in this pedagogic experiment. Thirty minutes before the start, with all the start-up booths and displays ready, the Spanish entrepreneurs were confronted with the fact, that children will be the beta-testers for their new technology products. In order to receive an (piercingly) honest, unbiased feedback on their products, the entrepreneurs had to face the challenge. The first session consisted of the Marshmallow Challenge (famous through the TEDxTalk), which had the goal to break the ice between children and entrepreneurs. The five start-ups formed teams with a group of 3-5 children and competed with each other to construct the highest free-standing structure made out of Spaghetti, Tape, Rope and a Marshmallow on top within 15 minutes. The winning team of 4-5 year old kids constructed a tower of 2.38m.

After having established a good level of trust, the actual feedback session was realized through a gamification approach by using a modified version of the popular game “La Oca” (Game of the Goose). The children were given a time frame to interact and test the products prior to the start of the game. The action fields of the game were altered and the children, who landed on those fields, were required to answer questions around the technological products and its business model in order to move on. The idea behind the game was to make the feedback session a fun experience with creative, surprising output and to allow the entrepreneurs to see their products with a set of different eyes. Core outcome of this experiment reveals, that you are able to sell your product to anyone if you can sell it to a 5 year old.

“We believe that this experimental encounter, which includes children, entrepreneurs and university students can give surprising results that serve both, the young participants, who approach experimentation and entrepreneurship, as well as the start-ups, which receive very interesting results by the analysis of their projects by the children through a game.” explains Margarita Ortiz, Vice-President of Fundación Create, who emphasis that events like NewMadTech “help to continue fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in our country through experimentation as an fundamental element at the right time”. 

​

Gamification is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in a non-game context in order to engage users and solve problems. Gamification is used in applications and processes to improve user engagement, Return on Investment, data quality, timeliness, and learning.